Friday, August 6, 2010

Swiss National Day 2009 is really what I consider the start of my Au Pair Adventure. Last year I arrived on a Thursday and SND was Saturday. It was first real taste of Switzerland and my first experience being surrounded by German.
It was a delicious and interesting day, but this year's holiday definitely topped last year's. By...um...A LOT

My original plans got scrapped just a couple days beforehand, but I was able to make some new plans with Malin, the Swedish au pair and we had a fantastic time. We took the train up to Stein am Rhein around dinnertime and sat in an outdoor cafe' eating salad with perch (me) and pasta with mushroom sauce (her). It was really really rediculously humid out so rather than wandering around town, we stopped and bought some beer and found a place to sit on the ledge surrounding the marina.

It was nice to and chat, watching the boats come in and people setting off their own fireworks, but a little after nine, the storm clouds rolled in and we got soaked. It poured and poured and we just sat there laughing about the whole thing. Malin didn't have an umbrella and I didn't have a coat. I'm sure people thought we were crazy as they went running by and we were sitting casually on the ledge laughing and trying to finish our beers before they got completely watered down.
We finally saw fireworks about 20 minutes after they were scheduled to start and they were INCREDIBLE. Though Swiss National Day is similar to America's Independence Day, these fireworks definitely were not. The show lasted nearly a half hour and I couldn't even begin to estimate how many fireworks they actually shot off. The only thing I could compare it to is the show at Disney's Magic Kingdom. They were THAT good.

We made it back to Schaffhausen around 11:30 and while that poor girl had to ride her bike home, I took the bus back to Stephanie's, where I was treated to plum cake and sangria until after three in the morning.

If you couldn't guess by the title, it has been raining here a lot this week. It's quite absurd really-how am I supposed to enjoy the rest of my time in Switzerland when it's always raining? *sigh* Wednesday afternoon was halfway decent-cloudy and cool, but no rain. Stephanie had had an allnight flight the night before, so I packed up the boys and we went to the Munot and stopped by a couple different playgrounds. Alessio said I made him walk too much that day. Poor kid is so lazy...and I might be partly responsible for that. Oops.
Anyway, it'll probably be a quiet weekend around these parts with Stephanie on a flight and the boys with their dad. I feel like I should start tying up ends here as I will be on my way back to the States in about three weeks, but some things are better left til tomorrow. (or, as Liano likes to say, "next week")